The Runt's Bargain
by Virodeil
Summary: *Caught Is Caught Is Cuddled Series* – One revelation breaks Loki's mind. Another revelation puts it back.


The Runt's Bargain  
By Rey

**One revelation breaks Loki's mind. Another revelation puts it back.**

Story tags: Broken Loki, Internalised Racism, Internalised Sexism, Single-Gendered Species, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Dehumanization, Mama Laufey, Morbid Contemplation

Author's notes: Well, unexpectedly, after lots of griping towards my muse, she finally let me write a birthday fic – a true birthday fic – for myself. So here's another happy birthday for me! Fresh from the oven, though, folks, so pardon the possible OOC-ness, disjointment etc, and please point them out to me if you've got the time and inclination to…. It'd help me lots. – Oh, and here's the answer to a few readers who wanted to see Farbauti's reaction to getting Loki back…. Enjoy!

Started on: 13th October 2019 at 07:01 PM

Finished on: 15th October 2019 at 09:47 PM

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

The words repeat again and again and again in a dazed Loki's mind. Each time, they sink deeper into his heart; sharp and barbed and hard and merciless. Like tent spikes of tough inner wood but splintery outer layer being driven into soft ground… or soft _flesh_.

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

Odin is lying sprawled on the floor, as if dead, after delivering such broken, breaking news.

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

An abandoned runt. _Laufey's_ spawn. The foremost enemy of Asgard. And Loki is _the heir presumptive_ of Asgard. But _why_? Why put a dangerous enemy in such a strategic, influential position?

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

Thor is banished. Odin is incapacitated. All because of Loki. Loki the jötun. Loki the monster.

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

And _nobody_ ever told the said jötun, the said monster, about its nature, about its destiny.

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

And this jötun, this monster, will have to _pretend_ to be a _placeholder_ king for Asgard if he – no, _it_ – does not act _now_.

And _it_ has to act now, because, `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._` And _its_ place is _not_ here.

Or maybe, it is…. A stolen relic among stolen relics, like Odin _denied_ so unconvincingly.

Still, the fact remains that, `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

Shunned, tossed aside, abandoned as a baby by the _other_ jötnar, the _other_ monsters, this runt does not even belong to them. And _yet_: `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

If the runt had a bargaining item – a _powerful_, _undeniable_ bargaining item – however… maybe….

`_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._` So "betrayal" is just expected from it, right? What would consist "betrayal" anyway, in this case? From which point of view, at that? The Asgardians? The jötnar? The runt itself? The Nine Realms? Or the universe at large?

A hysterical laugh threatens to burst free. – How great! What a joke! What the joke is, the runt of a monster does not know, does not care, and does not _want_ to know or care, either. `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._` It is enough.

And so it acts.

"Guards! Help!" it cries. "Help!"

Einherjar rush into the weapons vault. They only give the runt a sidelong glance, however, and do not deviate from their task: carting the runt's most recent victim away.

Dimly, the runt feels thankful for the consideration. Dimly, the runt wonders, worries, dreams. But only one thing fills its mind.

Once the Einherjar are gone, the Casket of Ancient Winters is gone, as well, alongside the runt that Odin has _also_ taken from the realm of the monsters.

So easy. So simple. The ruin of kingdoms….

The Casket, eager to go home perhaps, guides the runt smoothly along the path that, not so long ago, brought a pair of ice monsters to their fiery ruin in the weapons vault.

And then, for the first time ever in its life, the runt set foot on the land of its birth.

It is blue. It feels warm. But of course, `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster._`

Everything still towers above it. Everything still feels alien. But then, it is a runt stolen and kept away by Odin, isn't it? Why would being blue change anything?

It hides the Casket in its pocket dimension. It knows that this would not make much difference, but at least… maybe… this could stall hostilities a little until it gets to speak its bargain.

The ruin of a ruin greets it as it pads closer, closer, closer to where it was just a few candlemarks ago. Where the Crown Prince of Asgard demanded recompense and took what he wanted anyway in blood. Where the runt itself was faced with its own nature, uncovered at last, by _just_ the touch of an ice monster.

Where _Laufey_ was, and perhaps _is_, still.

Laufey, the "king" of savage beasts. Laufey, the _real_ father of the shame-bringing runt.

Laufey, who left a baby to die alone in a war. A war that Laufey himself – _it_self? – instigated, a millennium and two centuries ago.

Or rather, a millennium, two centuries, _and_ ninety-four years ago. And the runt was birthed _during that time_. – Was it accidentally conceived? Did Laufey rape somebody to produce it? Did Laufey hurt the runts mother _after_ the birth? Can it ask? Dare it ask? Maybe as part of the bargain for the Casket? It wants to know. It _needs_ to know. Are these barbaric monsters _that_ barbaric? Is the runt _also_ that barbaric by nature, tamed only by the "_kindness_" of Asgard – the kindness not to let a baby die suffering, die alone, only to let it grow up suffering alone?

If it is so, what then?

Regardless, it needs to ask. It _must_ ask.

The runt pads closer, closer, closer to the place where it all happened. But, as it stands before the throne of stone and ice and snow, as it looks up, up, up to Laufey's sharp, hard, unreadable face, the words, the plan, the bargain dry up in its throat, in its mind.

Because there is a larger, taller, _huger_ jötun standing behind and to the side of the throne. It sports rounded belly and rounded breasts, uncovered but half obscured by its bulging muscles all the same. And it is fitted with seiðr-suppressing cuffs _on the wrists __**and**__ ankles_.

Is it the "queen" of the jötnar? Is it pregnant? Is it…. Why is it _shackled_ so? _In the open_? Is the harsh, vulgar flaunting of enforced weakness a part of a punishment – its punishment? Is it the runt's birth _mother_? Is it – she? – has it been? – has _she_ been? – punished for conceiving and birthing a runt? What will Laufey do to _the runt itself_, if so?

But then, after grumbling a string of bitter, heated words in a language that is oddly untranslatable by Allspeak, possibly to itself, the jötun streaks _towards_ the runt, _and nothing bars its way_.

Before it realises what is happening, the runt is scooped up into those highly muscled arms, above that rounded belly, against those rounded breasts. Ice grows all over its buttocks and lower back, connecting it to the jötun like a cloth sling connecting mother and child.

And then the jötun tickles the back of the runt's neck with surprisingly gentle finger_claws_, while it fishes for the latter's pocket dimension with a hand coated in weakened but still potant, _knowing_ seiðr.

Caught between panic and fear of the discovery of the Casket – which is _still_ hidden within that pocket dimension – and the tickly feeling sneakily caused by the jötun, the runt shrieks and kicks and wriggles, frantically trying to get free.

And the jötun grunts, sways, buckles, but does not fall, let alone let the runt go. In fact, it now calls impatiently to _Laufey_ in that Allspeak-unfriendly language.

The runts struggles fiercer to get free, in response.

It forgets to try to prevent the jötun from trying to fish for its pocket dimension, in the process.

The Casket thumps into the sneaky, sneaky jötun's hand just as Laufey reaches the struggling duo, but the topmost monster only glances briefly – though yearningly, desirously – at the artefact.

No, the said topmost monster's attention is _fully_ aimed on _the runt_ after a brief moment. A brief moment in which something deep, deep inside of the runt seems to shift painfully, pealing away.

"Loptr?" he – no, _it_ – whispers, disbelievingly, hopefully, brokenly, just as _its_ arms snake round the first jötun and the runt, drawing them close together before the first, muscly captor could fall sprawling on the broken ground from all the struggle.

"Loptr!" it whines as if in agony, as a torrent of power that belongs to it, guided by the tendral of weakened seiðr belonging to the first jötun, drenches the runt, soaking the latter completely.

"Loptr," the first jötun agrees. And, for once, it then speaks in a language translatable by Allspeak, strained by what feels like physical exhaustion and beyond: "Your child, Fié. Are you going to just agonise until the end of the universe or are you going to hold them? If you want to return the Anchor back to its place right now, I can help give the little one their first taste of milk."

And as the answer, Laufey snatches _both_ the Casket and the runt into its arms. "mine!" it snarls.

"Surely not the Anchor," the first jötun laughs, although there is a trace of irony and bitterness in its voice, deeper and more rumbly than Laufey's.

"You know what I mean!" is the return, snappish but also… a little shaky…?

The runt struggles half-heartedly, but its eyes are fully focused on the glowing eyes of the topmost monster… which, for some reason, seem shinier than before…. Its arm holds the Casket close to its side, although the gesture is just that, a gesture, since Laufey's _far bigger, far longer, far stronger_ arms are wrapped round the _both_ of them.

This is the time. It will not have any other time to ask, to bargain, to say what it needs to say to _Laufey_, the father who may have abandoned it to die that long time ago.

So it blurts out, "I want some things in exchange for the Casket!"

`_What a silvertongue,_` it thinks, derides itself. But at least the words are out, now, unlike before. It is even accompanied by the first jötun's… _proud_ noises…?

Well, _and_, at least, Laufey frowns but nods and says, "What things?"

It takes the runt more will and courage to say the next part, but it _must_ know this first, before all others, within the bargain or not: "Are you my father?" It will break the already broken psyche if…

"No, I am not. What would make you think that, my child?"

…Laufey says _just that_.

The runt slumps, and its tenacious hold on the Casket slackens. – What is _true_, then? What is _the truth_? Why would Laufey say "my child" if it is not the runt's birth father?

And then, with another impatient call, the first jötun, who has not come closer for some reason, grumps, "No, silly child, Laufey is your _mother_. Now stop dawdling, Fié, or you will make a scene when everyone gathers, and my life will be the worse for it."

The runt barely notices what the first jötun says next, as its mind screeches to a halt – _again_, in barely a candlemark – and let the new information – the new _truth_? – swirl about all round it, _into_ it.

`_Mother? But… but… but…._`

But the presence of the power – _Laufey's power_ – that is even now _still_ wrapped round it is indeed _strangely_ familiar, _so_ familiar, even _comforting_. And the sound of the heartbeats and breathing that it is made to hear presently is _equally_ familiar.

`_But if even this was a lie, then what was the truth in what… Father?… said?_`

Father….

"Who is my father?"

"That lout over there, _of course_. And before you ask, yes, they are with child, with your fifth and sixth kin-siblings. And please do not ask me if you have any womb-siblings after you were stolen. Now, before _dearest_ Farbauti can embarrass us further or do anything equally loutish, let us return to the nest, and we can talk about any exchanges _after_ that."

So business-like. So blasé. So _accepting_, in perhaps Laufey's own way.

Too business-like, too blasé, too accepting to hide any lethal, let alone fatal distaste for runts.

Then, maybe, the runt, _this_ runt, will bargain for itself in exchange for the Casket of Ancient Winters. After all, `_I'm a jötun. I'm a monster. And my place is here._`


End file.
